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Anti-Racism Reading List August 2025
10+ insightful articles to foster anti-racism learning and action
Sharon Hurley Hall
August 27, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes
Hello friends,
If I had to pick two words to talk about the themes in this month's edition, it would be erasure and reclamation. Some articles focus on what's been left out, while others look at ways to take back agency and take up space. See what you think...
1. O’er the Land Built on Greed… by The Invisible Black Woman
When I first learned there was a third verse to the US national anthem, it blew my mind. In this short piece the author looks at that erasure and what it means for people racialised as Black:
"But the verse they won’t sing?
No refuge could save the hireling and slave,
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.
That was the third stanza. The one where Francis Scott Key made it plain: Freedom wasn’t for us. Death was. This anthem was never a promise, it was a threat."
2. Reclaiming Space: Black-Led Third Places Are Restoring Community, Culture and Connection by Anoa J. Changa
Of late, the conversation online among people racialised as Black and among Global Majority people has been about creating dedicated and safer spaces for ourselves online, given the toxicity that exists on many social media and other platforms. This article is about meeting that need in real life:
"Even where a dedicated Black-owned space isn't available, many people are leveraging publicly owned spaces, such as parks and libraries, to fill the void. Shamichael Hallman, the director of civic health and economic opportunity at the Urban Libraries Council, described libraries as being a place uniquely suited to meet our need and “hunger for connection.”"
3. What’s Missing from Jason Hickel’s Global Inequality Project by Anita Naidu
This is a "foxes and henhouse" moment. Here, author Anita Naidu highlights the lack of self-critique and self-awareness that underlines - and undermines the credibility of - what could be an important project (hat tip to Dr. Gillian Marcelle):
"The Global Inequality Project does not name whiteness as a logic of global extraction. It does not confront how white epistemic authority continues to shape what is knowable, fundable, and publishable. In doing so, it doesn’t merely risk reproducing the same hierarchies—it actively sustains them, reaffirming who gets to be seen as rigorous, credible, and “clear.”"
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